Premier League worried about piracy

[Bruce Wayne]

The Premier League has admitted that illegal streaming of live football on the internet could have a dramatic impact on the professional game's finances.

"The long term consequences for the game are that it has the potential to devalue or dilute the rights value, and in turn that will dilute the product that we are able to turn out and the quality of player coming to the league."

BBC SPORT | Football | Premier League | Premier League fears web pirates

What bollocks. Clear to see that this guy couldn't care less about the fans. Has he ever thought that there's a reason why so many are happy to watch what is a sub-standard feed for free?

The man needs to live in the real world. There's a recession at the moment, the like of which hasn't been seen in 80 years. Yet he expects fans to keep dipping into their pockets so players can earn another £10,000 a week.

Get real. In music you have services like iTunes that have been popular because they've offered better value than the status quo. You've had bands like Radiohead offering a pay what you want model, again to great success both for fans and the band.

Where's the innovation from the Premier League? Where's the indication that they look at fans and see anything other than big pound signs?

 

[Goat]

The Premier League has admitted that illegal streaming of live football on the internet could have a dramatic impact on the professional game's finances.

A new deal worth almost two billion pounds over three years has just been reached between the Premier League, and broadcasters Sky and Setanta, who will show live matches in the UK.

******* idiots.

 

[Robert Jarvis]

Quite right. The FA aka F*** All are talking bollocks.

 

[Dom1878]

**** that. Ill be watching streams for our away. Some people cant afford Sky Sports. Its by far too expensive.

The best solution would be to allow the Club to stream the videos live. (Everton Tv, Arsenal TV etc...), where the club gain profit, but its not bloody £30 a month.

 

[Nebbiolo]

The streams are ****e quality anyway. So where does the threat come from? You would hardly think it clever to avoid a subscription to Sky or avoid paying money to see the game live in preference to watching a 5 inch screen with blurry images, that crashes every 15 minutes, where the commentary and action are often out of synch and where you can't even make out which are players are which (apart from Castillo, spot those thighs from space).

 

[Whitebootman]

The streams are ****e quality anyway. So where does the threat come from? You would hardly think it clever to avoid a subscription to Sky or avoid paying money to see the game live in preference to watching a 5 inch screen with blurry images, that crashes every 15 minutes, where the commentary and action are often out of synch and where you can't even make out which are players are which (apart from Castillo, spot those thighs from space).

Sounds like ITV

 

[Sharpys top lip]

Sounds like ITV

Funny mate....

 

[TsarDiniyar]

Cancelled my sky sports subscription last week.

Plugged me laptop into the telly yesterday and got me stream full size and it was good quality, couldnt make out what the commentary was saying, but Andy Gray may as well be speaking swahili so nothing new there. All in all I was pleased to have watched the match costing me naff all.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

The thing is, I don't think the clubs appreciate how much money they're missing out on by jumping in the Sky boat.

In the 2007 reports the club earnt £27.5m from broadcasting. Lets assume that the club plays around 45 games a year in the league and the various cups (a conservative estimate). That works out at around £600,000 per game. Whenever I look at streams it seems that there are often around 100,000 people watching them. So just on those figures alone you'd need £6 per person per match to compare with what Sky are paying.

Now, of those 100,000 it's fair to assume that some are away fans so they wouldn't count. But equally it's fair to assume that a large proportion of fans won't watch the stream either because they'll be watching it on tv either at home or in a pub, or they won't want/be able to watch an illegal stream (or know one exists). So it doesn't seem too far fetched to believe we could pull in comfortably more than 100,000 viewers for every match if a decent quality stream was provided. One of similar quality say to the BBC streams. You might also reason that people may pay a slightly lower fee to watch the game later on, ala the BBC iPlayer.

At the moment football seems to be largely funded by the hardcore 'few'. Maybe 100,000 fans who buy the tickets, subscribe to Sky etc. and pay through the nose for it. The millions of other fans around the world remain largely untapped. It would only take a small bit of income from each of the minority to far surpass the income gained from the majority.